Trent Reznor is making his next Nine Inch Nails record available in a GarageBand Format. He's basically making the source files available for mash-ups and remixes. You can't sell them, but you can make and redistribute freely, which is pretty cool. Right on Trent.

Hope the album's a good one. I still relish in Downward Spiral occasionally. I love that record. I still think "Closer" raised the bar on percussion in the rock world forever.

Greg Bildson: Yes, we cut the check to her mother to reimburse her. We felt that suing a 12-year old in the Bronx wasn't the answer.

LR: Tell me more about P2P United.

GB: P2P United is basically trying to make sure that Congress doesn't do anything stupid, which they're apt to do in the technology world. We're trying to make sure to protect our rights to innovate and write software, and to address all of the bad mouthing the RIAA is constantly doing to P2P.

P2P was proven to be legal in that California decision. If there's anything we can do with respect to the overreach of the DMCA and invasion of privacy and, basically, due process -- we feel that there should be due process, and there should be an actual lawsuit before they are able to get information about users.

Congress is writing bills targeting P2P, and the RIAA is talking about pornography and homeland security and identity theft and all of these things that are really minor concerns, with regard to P2P. For the most part, Congress is either overreacting or doing the bidding of the RIAA.
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

For instance, there was a hearing regarding P2P and porn a few weeks ago. There are already laws that exist to punish people for being pedophiles; P2P's got nothing to do with it. In these cases, the content itself is illegal. P2P is not the concern when it comes to child endangerment, but they are constantly targeting P2P. They should go look at AOL and Yahoo chat rooms rather than P2P networks. Orin Hatch's presentation of child pornography began with a movie sponsored by the RIAA. The record industry is probably the last group of people to be protecting children, when their lyrics and videos are so explicit.

So the RIAA is basically using the high $150,000 per infringement to extort a settlement out of people who wouldn't even consider fighting it. People view this more like a speeding ticket instead of something where one act of infringement can cost you $150,000. We're in favor of people being able to protect their copyrights, but in a way that is fair. If the government is going to regulate, they need to know what they're doing. They shouldn't be getting their information only from the RIAA.

LR: So are you trying to educate Congress?

GB: Yes. P2P United is trying to educate Congress. However, their staffers need to be willing to be educated. So far, they've been willfully blind or ignorant.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/11/14/limewire.html

Interview with LimeWire COO Greg Bildson
by Lisa Rein
11/14/2003

Greg Bildson is the COO of LimeWire and president of P2P United, a consortium of P2P software companies created to help educate Congress and the public about peer-to-peer software, technology, and culture. P2P United is the organization that paid 12-year-old Brianna LaHara's $2,000 RIAA settlement after the RIAA served her with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoena.

Advertisement
P2P United is also trying to educate the RIAA about the many ways in which P2P technologies could be beneficial to its member companies. LimeWire's MagnetMix web site provides one example of the numerous ways that traditional web-based programming can be combined with P2P technologies to provide new kinds of experiences for music lovers.

In this interview, Lisa Rein catches up with Greg Bildson to hear his views on the state of P2P, the RIAA, and the challenge of educating lawmakers.
Yes, We Cut the Check

Lisa Rein: So, you guys paid Brianna's RIAA fine?

Greg Bildson: Yes, we cut the check to her mother to reimburse her. We felt that suing a 12-year old in the Bronx wasn't the answer.

LR: Tell me more about P2P United.

GB: P2P United is basically trying to make sure that Congress doesn't do anything stupid, which they're apt to do in the technology world. We're trying to make sure to protect our rights to innovate and write software, and to address all of the bad mouthing the RIAA is constantly doing to P2P.

P2P was proven to be legal in that California decision. If there's anything we can do with respect to the overreach of the DMCA and invasion of privacy and, basically, due process -- we feel that there should be due process, and there should be an actual lawsuit before they are able to get information about users.

Congress is writing bills targeting P2P, and the RIAA is talking about pornography and homeland security and identity theft and all of these things that are really minor concerns, with regard to P2P. For the most part, Congress is either overreacting or doing the bidding of the RIAA.
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

For instance, there was a hearing regarding P2P and porn a few weeks ago. There are already laws that exist to punish people for being pedophiles; P2P's got nothing to do with it. In these cases, the content itself is illegal. P2P is not the concern when it comes to child endangerment, but they are constantly targeting P2P. They should go look at AOL and Yahoo chat rooms rather than P2P networks. Orin Hatch's presentation of child pornography began with a movie sponsored by the RIAA. The record industry is probably the last group of people to be protecting children, when their lyrics and videos are so explicit.

So the RIAA is basically using the high $150,000 per infringement to extort a settlement out of people who wouldn't even consider fighting it. People view this more like a speeding ticket instead of something where one act of infringement can cost you $150,000. We're in favor of people being able to protect their copyrights, but in a way that is fair. If the government is going to regulate, they need to know what they're doing. They shouldn't be getting their information only from the RIAA.

LR: So are you trying to educate Congress?

GB: Yes. P2P United is trying to educate Congress. However, their staffers need to be willing to be educated. So far, they've been willfully blind or ignorant.

LR: Do you think that the RIAA might eventually see the various ways that P2P could be beneficial to their business model?

GB: We hope so. We're seen as a threat to the record industry, but there's definitely potential for a win-win solution. The discussion needs to move beyond sound bites for soccer moms. Congress is making sound bites rather than thinking seriously about technology or innovation.

LR: What do you think of compulsories for file sharing?

GB: The big media companies -- the "Big 5" -- have had a lock on both distribution and licensing in the past. If the RIAA had let people license their music in the 90s, they wouldn't have the piracy problem they have today. There was a natural demand. There's a benefit to the current world of having music currently available.

LR: What about iTunes and Buymusic.com? What do you think of them?

GB: They're steps in the right direction, but they're still radically overpriced. In the digital age, there's no reason for a song to cost 99 cents; it should be five cents. Another issue is that the Microsoft DRM looks to be too restrictive. Judging by the trend of recent PC pay-per-download sites that all use Microsoft DRM, handing another monopoly to Microsoft doesn't seem like a smart move.

ETech 2004 Conference

Session by Robert Kay
Building Next Generation File Sharing With Social Software

This talk will present social network models, detection avoidance strategies, attack strategies and a real world safety evaluation of such systems.

GB: We've been putting the technology in place for this for a while. It's an example of integrating P2P networks and the Web. We think that's what the future is going to be. The Web can present things nicer and give you nice images, while the existing P2P networks just act as sort of a raw Google search. "Magnet links" can work into P2P networks for a richer experience by packaging the content into a single download. We think that it's going to appeal to content creators in the future. The portals will highlight high-quality, legitimate content for high-quality independent artists of all kinds.

So rather than running their own web servers, artists will create their content and then bundle it into a package media file that's just a .zip file with an index.html file inside to launch from. This file is placed on a P2P network. The entire experience is serialized, if you will, in these packages.

LR: So a user would see the web page, and then click on the link to get the music via a P2P network, rather than eating up bandwidth.

GB: Right, with videos and pictures and things.

LR: ...that would be expensive to serve on the web?

GB: Right. It's expensive to serve, but it's easy to use P2P to share. We think there are going to be a lot of creative independents in the future. And you can build the advertising vehicles right into the packages, if you want.

LR: So how can artists implement this technology now?

GB: Anybody can put magnet links up. We're also accepting submissions and hosting content ourselves. It doesn't cost anything, and we don't see money being involved in the future.

LR: How would this work, actually?

GB: Right now people don't know what magnet links are, but in the near future, people will be using the LimeWire "Library." The LimeWire Library is a type of file browser. Within the Library tab of the LimeWire application, you will be able to view and create magnet links to files that you share, and be able to email links to these files. There will be options to view the magnet link or email the magnet link to others, so that they can click a link in their email to launch the magnet link "packages." The links will launch their LimeWire P2P client right from their email client.

LR: Is LimeWire cross-platform?

GB: Yes. It's cross-platform. It's in Java.

LR How many LimeWire users are there?

GB: We lost ability to track our users a while ago. But we've had at least 300,000 users a day for a while. We're pretty close to 50/50 on the Mac and PC platforms.

Lisa Rein is a co-founder of Creative Commons, a video blogger at On Lisa Rein's Radar, and a singer-songwriter-musican at lisarein.com.

Salon: The Same Old File Format Trouble With The New 'Legal' Online Music Services

Andrew Leonard makes some relevant statements about what's wrong with all the different "legal" music services developing, and how, by not embracing the universal MP3 format that made Napster so damn great, they all kind of suck.
Musical snaresIs Apple's iTunes service nirvana for music fans -- or just the start of a file-format nightmare that will drive us all nuts?
By Andrew Leonard for Salon.

The quality of my life has improved. But iTunes for Windows is not perfect, and my music consumer utopia is still an unrealized dream. Despite its vaunted half a million songs, I want plenty of albums and acts that are not yet available. I am greedy. I want everything. Let me buy it now. I'm also not crazy about the iTunes library organizing software. But what alarms me the most is the flip side of Apple's success -- a looming battle over file formats that, at least in the short term, is going to force consumers to make hard choices.

Because iTunes won't play my Windows Media music files. And the Windows Media Player won't play songs purchased from the iTunes store.

That's not the future I want to pay for. In the 21st century era of late capitalism, the consumer is supposed to be king -- my every desire is supposed to be reflected by marketplace offerings. Instead, the market is ordering me to get Steve Jobs' smirking grin tattooed on my butt, and while that may be an improvement on being branded with a Microsoft iron, I'd still rather keep my skin as it started, unblemished.

Right now, there are several options for compressing music files into sizes where it becomes feasible to download them online. Tunes purchased from the iTunes Music Store come in the AAC format. Tunes bought from most other commercial services have aligned themselves with Microsoft's WMA format. Then there's the original MP3 standard, which is aligned with no single company, and there's even a free software alternative called Ogg Vorbis.

This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion of the relative merits of the different formats. Suffice it to say that about a year ago I committed an egregious error. When I finally purchased my first computer with a CD burner, I was so excited about being able to make my own CD mixes that I unthinkingly went ahead and used the Windows Media Player to rip all my favorite CDs to my hard drive. The Windows Media Player allows users to encode their songs only in the WMA format, which (like iTunes' AAC format) comes with various digital rights management capabilities built in.

Now I have all this music that iTunes won't play, and a bunch of songs purchased from iTunes that the Media Player won't play. So, at the moment, I am prevented from burning a CD that has songs from both libraries. There are converters available that will transform WMA files into AACs and eventually there will no doubt be converters that perform the reverse service, but the process is a hassle that may end up downgrading the overall sound quality. I would have been far better off if I had ripped all my CDs to MP3s to begin with, because iTunes and the iPod will play MP3s. (And even, better, the iTunes software will allow me to rip my CDs into MP3s.)

I should have known better, because now I'm sitting exactly where Microsoft wants me, facing a significant "switching cost" if I want to adopt iTunes as my music-management software of choice. It takes time to rip CDs -- and I have a lot of 'em...

I have a friend who has about 30,000 songs on a hard drive. There's nothing to stop me from hooking his computer to mine with a USB cable and slurping all that music at once. Sure it's illegal, and I'm not going to do it, but the RIAA would never know if I did, unless I did something stupid and put that server online for everybody on the Net to grab.

All over the world, even as Hollywood tries to push copy-protection legislation and sue individual file traders, music lovers are accumulating larger and larger collections of songs on their hard drives. Eventually, we'll be able to go to our local flea market, and the guy who right now is selling freshly burned copies of Eminem is going to be selling us DVDs with 4.8 gigabytes of music, also for a few bucks. Even worse, the swap meets will soon be featuring swappable drives that will contain everything the Beatles ever recorded, or all the pop music from the '60s, or the entire Warner Bros. catalog. Cheap.

I don't know how the record companies are going to stop it. I do know that if one day I'm staring at hundreds of gigabytes of music files on my own computer that I paid for that aren't playable on the newest piece of hardware or best available piece of music software, I'm going to be sorely tempted to head down to the flea market. And even if I refrain, that doesn't mean everybody else will.

Wouldn't it just be better to give me what I want, right now? Please don't make the consumer angry! Or he'll bite.

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/leon/2003/10/28/itunes/index.html

Musical snares
Is Apple's iTunes service nirvana for music fans -- or just the start of a file-format nightmare that will drive us all nuts?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew Leonard

Oct. 28, 2003 | I downloaded my first MP3 file in February 1998. The process was convoluted to the point of absurdity. I used one program to rip a song from a CD I owned, another program to convert that into a compressed MP3 file, and a third program to upload it to an FTP site that required visitors to donate their own MP3s first before any downloading would be permitted. To complicate matters further, just finding that FTP site required lurking in seedy chat rooms where file traders exchanged passwords to sites that might be open only for a few hours in the dead of night.

And yet, there was something so obvious and right about playing music on my computer, on simply desiring a particular track and then going and getting it, that I knew that something fundamental had changed about my relationship to recorded music. When my Rage Against the Machine track blasted out of my computer speakers, I was transfixed by a vision of music-consuming utopia: Some day, everything ever recorded would be one or two clicks away. Every bootleg, every B side, every studio outtake. This is what the Internet was good at: connecting me with the objects of my desire. I want; therefore I get to have.

Questions of cost were not meaningful to me. I am no fan of record companies or overpriced CDs, but I am also not one who believes that all intellectual property should be free. I was, and am, plenty willing to pay a fee for a desired service. Indeed, when Napster ushered in the era of instant music gratification in 1999, I always felt a little uneasy with the justifications that file traders made for the morality of their copyright violations. To me, the success of Napster and then Kazaa demonstrated that there was a gaping market opportunity, and the longer the record companies took to get their act together, the longer they would stoke the flames of piracy.

So while waiting for an online music service that was right for me, I contented myself with ripping my own CDs to my hard drive and burning compilation mixes for my own amusement and as gifts for friends. And then came iTunes.

Like millions of other Windows users, I was excited when iTunes was finally made available to the non-Macintosh world two weeks ago. At the original debut of iTunes' online music store, it seemed clear that this was best legally sanctified option so far -- and not just because I lusted after an iPod. Steve Jobs and Apple ("Rip. Mix. Burn.") understood that instead of resisting music consumers, it was time to aid and abet them. I downloaded the software within hours of its being made available and bought my first songs within minutes of installation.

The quality of my life has improved. But iTunes for Windows is not perfect, and my music consumer utopia is still an unrealized dream. Despite its vaunted half a million songs, I want plenty of albums and acts that are not yet available. I am greedy. I want everything. Let me buy it now. I'm also not crazy about the iTunes library organizing software. But what alarms me the most is the flip side of Apple's success -- a looming battle over file formats that, at least in the short term, is going to force consumers to make hard choices.

Because iTunes won't play my Windows Media music files. And the Windows Media Player won't play songs purchased from the iTunes store.

That's not the future I want to pay for. In the 21st century era of late capitalism, the consumer is supposed to be king -- my every desire is supposed to be reflected by marketplace offerings. Instead, the market is ordering me to get Steve Jobs' smirking grin tattooed on my butt, and while that may be an improvement on being branded with a Microsoft iron, I'd still rather keep my skin as it started, unblemished.

Right now, there are several options for compressing music files into sizes where it becomes feasible to download them online. Tunes purchased from the iTunes Music Store come in the AAC format. Tunes bought from most other commercial services have aligned themselves with Microsoft's WMA format. Then there's the original MP3 standard, which is aligned with no single company, and there's even a free software alternative called Ogg Vorbis.

This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion of the relative merits of the different formats. Suffice it to say that about a year ago I committed an egregious error. When I finally purchased my first computer with a CD burner, I was so excited about being able to make my own CD mixes that I unthinkingly went ahead and used the Windows Media Player to rip all my favorite CDs to my hard drive. The Windows Media Player allows users to encode their songs only in the WMA format, which (like iTunes' AAC format) comes with various digital rights management capabilities built in.

Now I have all this music that iTunes won't play, and a bunch of songs purchased from iTunes that the Media Player won't play. So, at the moment, I am prevented from burning a CD that has songs from both libraries. There are converters available that will transform WMA files into AACs and eventually there will no doubt be converters that perform the reverse service, but the process is a hassle that may end up downgrading the overall sound quality. I would have been far better off if I had ripped all my CDs to MP3s to begin with, because iTunes and the iPod will play MP3s. (And even, better, the iTunes software will allow me to rip my CDs into MP3s.)

I should have known better, because now I'm sitting exactly where Microsoft wants me, facing a significant "switching cost" if I want to adopt iTunes as my music-management software of choice. It takes time to rip CDs -- and I have a lot of 'em.

Sometime soon, I will start the laborious process of re-ripping all my CDs into MP3 files so they will play nice with iTunes. But the more I think about it, the more antsy I get about my decision to back the iTunes camp. What if, after I spend thousands of dollars on iTunes, Rhapsody or Buymusic.com or the new Napster rolls out a new version of a service that offers access to 5 million songs instead of just five hundred thousand? What if some new programming genius comes up with a compression format that uses even fewer bits but delivers better sound? Then won't I have achieved little more than exchanging one digital music tyrant for another?

I am confident that the marketplace is going to steadily deliver a progression of options that benefit me in some way: a wider selection of songs, lower prices, easier-to-use software. But I'm not confident that I won't be endlessly posed with a series of ever more onerous switching costs. Perhaps, once hard drives and bandwidth get big enough, we'll be able to do away with compression formats altogether, but companies like Microsoft and Apple are still going to strive to lock users in to their software/hardware platforms as long as they can. And that is decidedly not an example of the marketplace serving my consumer desires.

Then again, the music industry had its hands forced once, when widespread piracy made it clear that the studios faced the prospect of losing their customers entirely if they didn't offer customers a way to get what they wanted. The whole dynamic could easily repeat itself, should consumers ever get too frustrated with the available offerings.

I have a friend who has about 30,000 songs on a hard drive. There's nothing to stop me from hooking his computer to mine with a USB cable and slurping all that music at once. Sure it's illegal, and I'm not going to do it, but the RIAA would never know if I did, unless I did something stupid and put that server online for everybody on the Net to grab.

All over the world, even as Hollywood tries to push copy-protection legislation and sue individual file traders, music lovers are accumulating larger and larger collections of songs on their hard drives. Eventually, we'll be able to go to our local flea market, and the guy who right now is selling freshly burned copies of Eminem is going to be selling us DVDs with 4.8 gigabytes of music, also for a few bucks. Even worse, the swap meets will soon be featuring swappable drives that will contain everything the Beatles ever recorded, or all the pop music from the '60s, or the entire Warner Bros. catalog. Cheap.

I don't know how the record companies are going to stop it. I do know that if one day I'm staring at hundreds of gigabytes of music files on my own computer that I paid for that aren't playable on the newest piece of hardware or best available piece of music software, I'm going to be sorely tempted to head down to the flea market. And even if I refrain, that doesn't mean everybody else will.

Wouldn't it just be better to give me what I want, right now? Please don't make the consumer angry! Or he'll bite.

well i recollect the days when music was free
you could tape from the radio, burn a CD
now the RIAA wants to know about me
my address, my number, my ISP
yo, bitches, ain't we still got privacy?
why the president be lettin' you spy on me
how many tricks they gonna be lettin you try on me?
trying to be spying on my MP3s

But you protect YOUR corporate privacy
Keep your phone number hidden from the bourgeoisie
Your customers have to play hide and seek
So here's the number to call if you disagree

775-0101
775-0101
202-775-0101

why's the RIAA starting litigations
the cops should be looking for the real perpetrations
the killers, the racists, the rapists
'stead of fucking with us for saving to our hard disk
raise your middle finger if you feel me loc
these fucking subpoenas are a fucking joke
leave us alone, throw us a bone
like i did with your mom that time at your home

There's NO SUCH THING as bad publicity
Even if you giving it out for free
So join us in the twenty-first century
Where we find our new songs on MP3s
Embrace the new technologies
Grokster, Kazaa, and P2P
So call this number now, and help them see
And if you call from work, your call is free!

775-0101
775-0101
202-775-0101

202 is the area code and we're dialin'
775 and then we be smilin'
0101-1-cary sherman
well isn't this fun it's ZUG.com

you know, they've never been fair to the bands.
now the riaa takes a stand?
can't believe we're getting preached to by the man
so what's the plan, stan? I've got a short attention span.

they've gotta change up the music industry
make it all available on MP3
listen to people like you and me
and make us wanna pay a monthly fee

this song is now my lyrical catastrophe
go ahead and grab it, it's completely free
aint gotta pay a dime to listen to me
So share this song and fuck the industry